Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Plenty of chiz to get all choosy about - nicht wahr? The Commonwealth Reset, The Bystander in Chief pose while Preacher Command crushed the Green Revolution, Arab Sprang time travelling back to the 7th Century, announcing AFPAK"s UnAss date, drone wars, keeping Gitmo open, running away from Iraq and on and on...

44"s handling of Syria exemplifies every weakness in his foreign policy — from his excessive faith in “engaging” troublesome foreign leaders to his insistence on multilateralism as an end in itself to his self-defeating caution in asserting American power.

The result is not a painful but isolated setback, but an emerging strategic disaster: a war in the heart of the Middle East that is steadily spilling over to vital allies, such as Turkey and Jordan, and to volatile neighbors, such as Iraq and Lebanon. Al-Qaeda is far more active in Syria than it is in Libya — while more liberal and secular forces are turning against Great Satan because of her failure to help them. More than 30,000 people — most of them civilians — have been killed, and the toll mounts by the hundreds every day.

Of course, 44 is not solely responsible for this mess. But his serial miscalculations have had the consistent if unintended effect of enabling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad — first to avoid international isolation, then to go on slaughtering his own population with impunity.

44"s Syria policy began in 2009 with the misguided idea of reaching out to the dictator. Within a month of his inauguration, 44 reversed 43’s approach of isolating Assad. He later reopened the Embassy and dispatched senior envoys, such as George Mitchell.

The problem with this policy was not just the distasteful courting of a rogue regime but the willful disregard of the lessons absorbed by 43, who also tried reaching out to Assad, only to learn the hard way that he was an irredeemable thug. Yet 44 insisted on reversing 43’s policy of distancing Great Satan from strongmen like Assad and Hosni Mubarak — a monumental miscalculation.

For the past three months, 44’s policy has become a negative: He is simply opposed to any use of American power. Fixed on his campaign slogan that “the tide of war is receding” in the Middle East, 44 claims that intervention would only make the conflict worse — and then watches as it spreads to NATO ally Turkey and draws in hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters.It's Syria that is 44’s greatest failure; it will haunt whomever occupies the Oval Office next year.

wHoA!

h0t!

~hEy Y"all! DoN"t MiSs GsGf~!

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